Tropical Air Spawns Cloudburst

Call it the “Deluge of the Day”, call it another downpour in our “Monsoon Season”, or call it a freak afternoon “Cloudburst”! Whatever terminology you prefer, this summer of 2008 is sure turning into a hum dinger for rain.

Ground zero for the torrential downpours on Wednesday was Kanawha County, where fireman Tom Miller of Sissonville is an expert on high water rescues. “The first call came in around 5:06 and after that it was chaos”, Tom told me as he referred to the flash flooding that gobbled up Kanawha Two Mile near Rich Fork just north of the Charleston city limits.

It was here along Rt. 21 near Bonham Elementary that a 2 inch downpour swamped the hollow and shut down a mile and a half stretch of the road out to the Interstate. “We are lucky someone didn’t drown”, Tom added as the water rose incredibly fast.

I will add a series of your e-pixs of the event as time permits.

The culprit for the sudden cloudburst was the jungle-like humidity that had engulfed the air. This high octane atmosphere was indeed more typical of the Amazon or Congo than Charleston, with dew points in the 70s.

All day long the skies had threatened as a potpourri of dark clouds and periods of sun made for a dazzling tropical sky overhead. When a cold front intercepted that moisture rich air in the late afternoon, Mother Nature wrung out all the water from the sky in the guise of another Deluge.

In the Charleston area, 1 to 2 inches of rain fell as the monthly total swelled to more than 3.5 inches (4 inches is normal for the entire month).

Contrast that with the .75" of rain that fell in the Beverly Hills section of Huntington (Gene Evans report) and ther paltry .14" of rain that was measured officially at the Huntingbton Tri-State airport.

That tropical air has been chased away for your Thursday, so the weatehr will aim to please once we rid the early morning fog.

P.S. To the person who appropriately corrected me on the locator of Rich Fork not Ridge Fork, I wrote down the data inaccurately from my source. He said "Rich Fork" and I heard "Ridge Fork".

No I do not know every hollow in Appalachia. We cover 40 counties in 3 states and frankly it has taken me 20 years to know the little I know.

But I did change the locator based on your e-mail and I thank you for The correction.